Fairly standard brew day with nothing unusual to report, and only one small mistake: left the HLT control valve closed after sparging and wondered why the pump temperature wasn’t going up despite the heaters being on full. Oops. No damage to pump though, seems I was lucky.
In other news I wasn’t even close to hitting my numbers, possibly due to the age of some of the base malts. Post-boil gravity was near enough however despite being several litres short, so I topped it up using bottled mineral water on the basis that I didn’t want a 5.9% brew anyhow, and would much rather have a sessionable keg.
Brew Day Notes
0655 Start dough-in. 25 litres.
0705 Mash rest start. Just over 30 litres.
0735 Mash start.
0740 First stir
0750 Second stir
0800 Third stir, looking good.
0815 Fourth stir
0845 Starting vorlauf
0850 Start sparge
0852 Sparge finished
0855 Drain finished, 27.5 litres, 1.027 @ 75℃. Boil volume was supposed to be 28.86 litres, 1.050. Wow! Was going to top this up, but I’m so low on gravity that I don’t think I’ll bother.
0920 Going for boil
0930 Boil tracker on, 60 minute additions
1000 30 minute additions
1040 Boil over, chilling to 80℃ for hop-stand
1045 Starting hop-stand
1105 Starting chill to 20℃ for transfer. Volume looks like 23 litres with the chiller in.
1125 Return temperature now 25℃ (tank 36℃) but not dropping much more despite quite a lot of water through the chiller – problems of “summer” I think.
1130 Starting transfer
1155 Got 19 litres in the FV @ 1.055, so bang-on with gravity but 4 litres short in quantity. Topping up with 2 litres spring water, pitching starter and into the fridge at 20℃.
1300 Clean-up finished